


Sapphire and Steel

by JustAPassingGlance



Series: 12 Days of Christmas 2013 [4]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Best Friends, Friendship, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-02-28 21:39:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2748041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAPassingGlance/pseuds/JustAPassingGlance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By tradition, the first half of the first snow day had always been theirs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sapphire and Steel

He woke up and everything different. Stiller and quieter. Muffled, almost. He could hear his parents down the hall, his father’s snoring and his mother’s constant tossing and turning but even that space between them seemed amplified.

Hesitantly he crept out of bed and over to this window. With a growing sense of trepidation he reached out a hand and twitched the curtain aside, half expecting to have been transported to a different world or alien planet in the middle of the night.

He recognized the lamppost and the shadowy cluster of trees on his neighbor’s yard.

Everything else was different.

It was white as far as he could see with his face pressed up against the freezing glass. The road and his driveway had entirely disappeared, nothing more than the vague valley differentiating them from the yard and the gardens.

It wasn’t that, in his six years of life, he had never seen snow before. But it had been dustings here and there, never more than an inch of two. This though. This was enough to fill up the whole entire world.  

Eagerly he bolted from his room, down the hall, and to the mudroom on the ground floor. It took him less than two minutes (he knew, he counted) to bundle himself up in his boots, coat, and snowpants.

Fleetingly he thought about leaving a note so his parents would know where he disappeared to, but the siren silence of the outdoors was too alluring to ignore. Bracing himself against the cold he trundled his way outside.

His breath was stolen from his chest and within seconds he couldn’t feel his nose anymore.

In looping strides he made his way across the streets and lawns of his neighborhood, creating spiraled patterns in the snow as he plowed through it. 

Instead of 5 minutes, it took him nearly half an hour to cut across to Quinn’s and by the time he got there his fingers were completely numb and his legs were more tired than they had ever been in his life, including when his mother had brought him to the top of la tour Eiffel and he had done all the climbing on his own.

Exhausted, he flopped down onto the mound that he was pretty sure was the Fabray’s front porch.

He didn’t even look up when the door was pulled open a few minutes later. Not until he heard his best friend’s voice hiss ‘get inside.’ (Admittedly, to call Quinn his best friend was a little strong as she was his only friend in Ohio. In the month he had been there he had failed entirely to convince his class that he wasn’t an alien. Quinn and Santana were the only people in the whole school who would talk to him and Santana didn’t seem to realize his name was not Frenchie.)

“I wasn’t tired,” he protested as he scampered up and into her house. “I was just watching the snow fall while I waited for you.”

She clucked her tongue in skeptical agreement. “You shouldn’t have forgotten your gloves,” she chastised, suddenly standing up much straighter. “I’ll make you some hot chocolate.” Determinedly she strode into the kitchen and by the time Sebastian had struggled out of his boots and joined her she was already clambering down from the counter; flowery nightgown hiked up mid-thigh so she wouldn’t trip on it. “Mommy thinks I can’t get it when it’s up there.” She smirked proudly.

“You only can because I taught you how.”

“Nu-uh.” She stuck her tongue out at him.

“Yeah-huh.”

“I don’t have to make you hot chocolate, you know.” She punctuated her sentence with a toss of her hair. “Now get the milk out for me. It’s on the middle shelf. And get me a stool so I can reach the stove.”

“You’re very bossy today,” he grumbled but complied anyways.

“Alright.” She surveyed the room from atop her stool. “You hand me the ingredients as I ask for them. Cocoa,” she demanded.

“How much?”

Quinn bit her lips uncertainly. “A cup and a half,” she decided finally. “And two cups of sugar.”

Carefully Sebastian measured them out for her before passing them over.

“Half a cup of water.”

He trotted over to the faucet and back again.

“And a pinch-” she leaned down to pinch Sebastian’s cheek between her thumb and forefinger, “of salt.”

“Do that again, Fabray and I’ll pinch you out of existence.”

“No you won’t. Because you love me.” 

“No I don’t. I hate you,” he muttered unconvincingly.

“Milk,” she demanded, completely ignoring him. “Five cups.” Impatiently, she tapped the spoon against the rim of the pot as she waited for him to pour it in.

The murky mixture nearly overflowed the pot and slopped over the edges as Quinn carelessly stirred it.

“LUCY QUINN FABRAY!” Quinn’s mother shrieked from the doorway, staring in horror at the mess they had made of the kitchen. Quinn jumped and fell off the chair, knocking Sebastian down in the process.

“Yes, Mommy?” She asked innocently, blinking up from the floor.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?” She continued yelling. “And you,” she turned on Sebastian. “Do your parents know where you are?” Without waiting for a reply she dashed over to the phone and was dialing Sebastian’s number. “Yes, Mr. Smythe. It’s Mrs. Fabray. I just thought you should know that your son is standing in my kitchen. No. No, I had no idea he was here. No, that’s not problem at all. I’m so sorry about waking you, I just thought you should know. Okay. Okay. I’ll see you later then.”

Sebastian and Quinn, still on the ground, listened to Mrs. Fabray’s end of the conversation with baited breaths.

“You’re staying until Mr. Fabray leaves for work,” she informed them after hanging up the phone. “And you’re both going to be grounded.”

“But Moooooom,” Quinn whined.

“No. Now clean up here and find a quiet way to keep yourself quietly occupied for the next few hours.”

“Can we go outside?”

“It’s 4 in the morning.”

“We’ll stay in the yard,” Sebastian promised, eagerly scampering to his feet and batting his eyelashes. “And be very quiet.”

“Like mice,” Quinn agreed, wide-eyed and imploring.

“Fine,” Mrs. Fabray sighed.

Quinn beamed. “Thank you, Mommy. You’re the greatest.”

Under Mrs. Fabray’s exasperated supervision they hastily cleaned up, before quickly gulping down mugs of hot chocolate and scampering to the door, quietly giggling as they raced down the hall and into their snow clothes.

* * *

 

_7 Years Later_

By tradition, the first half of the first snow day had always been theirs. While Blaine and Santana slept until noon and Brittany helped Lord Tubbington feel closer to his Eskimo ancestors by constructing an igloo, the hours between waking and noon belonged to Quinn and Sebastian.

Quinn had stayed up late the night before in her inside out pajamas, watching the downy flakes float down, illuminated by the street lamps. When the ringing of her alarm went off over two hours earlier than normal she flew out of bed and eagerly threw back the curtains, pleased to see the flakes were still falling.

By 4.30 she was struggling through the foot of snow that had accumulated overnight. In the distance the plows put up a futile struggle to clear a path for the unlucky workers who still needed to go about their day.

“Good morning, Mr. Smythe,” she greeted when the door to the Smythe’s house swung open seconds after she made it to the porch.

“Quinn.” He inclined his head and almost smiled. “He’s in the kitchen. Doing something with some pans.”   

She smiled warmly, as always a little proud that Mr. Smythe remembered her name. He avoided the kids much as he could, despite the amount of time they had spent running around his house. Brittany and Santana he had a tendency to ignore entirely.

“He’s hopeless by himself, isn’t he?”

“I’m surprised he survived Paris without you,” Mr. Smythe laughed, taking Quinn’s coat and scarf from her and hanging them on the coat rack while Quinn stood a little in shock. “It’s good seeing you again.” This time he actually did smile before turning around and heading back to his office.

“You too, sir,” she called down the hall after him. She waited until the door had closed behind him before she followed the sound of crashing pans into the kitchen.  

“I think your dad was happy to see me,” she said a little numbly by way of greeting.

“He’s been weird ever since I moved back,” Sebastian said distractedly as he weighed two different pots in his hands. “Which one?”

“Here,” she took the 2-quart saucepan from him. “Get the milk.”

Easily they fell into their old routine; Sebastian adding while Quinn stirred. When they were done they took clinked their cups together before gulping it down, despite the urge to savor. Sebastian finished his first, smirking even as he rolled his burnt tongue around in his mouth.  

Quinn sighed, finishing the rest of hers. Her cup had barely been placed on the counter before they were both sprinting down the hall, shoving each other out of the way and rushing to struggle into their winter attire.

“Yes!” Quinn punched the air as she jumped off the porch while Sebastian was still fumbling to lace up his boots. “Sucker!” She crowed.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Sulking, he made his way to the garden shed and wrestled an old wooden sled out of it. “Hop on.”

They made it about a fourth of the way through the still-undeveloped plots of land behind the Smythe house before Sebastian threw himself, face first, down in the snow. “I give up,” he moaned.

“Whiiiiimp,” Quinn trilled. And a minute later she was pouncing on top of her prone friend and trying to shove snow down his jacket.

“Don’t even.” He squirmed out from under her and, using his legs, flipped her to the ground before collapsing next to her, both staring up at the sky above them and the snow still dancing down on them.

“We need to do this forever,” Quinn declared seriously. She pushed herself up so she was supported by one arm and looked down at Sebastian, blinking away the snowflakes clinging to her eyelashes.

“Okay.”

“I’m serious. Promise me. Through high school and college. And when we have kids we’ll drag them out of bed and make them tag along.”

“Mhmm,” Sebastian agreed noncommittally. He had learned that it was always best to nod and agree when Quinn brought up imaginary future children, even though he had absolutely no intention of ever having them. “But I promise that even when we’re 70 and wrinkly I’ll be dragging your saggy butt around in blizzards.”

Removing his gloves, he held up his hand and waited for Quinn to do the same. Hooking their pinky fingers together they looked at each other seriously, tugging tight to seal the promise.

“However,” she said, breaking the moment, “my butt will not be saggy.” Scooping up a large handful of powder she dumped it on his face.

As he spluttered beneath her, the sound of her giggles echoed across the field.  


End file.
